InfoStrat president James Townsend's thoughts on digital transformation, marketing automation, customer relationship management, Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly CRM), government contracting, customer service and more. For breaking news, follow me on Twitter @jamestownsend and for more depth see the InfoStrat website at www.infostrat.com

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Pricing: 6 Reasons Not to Panic

Last week Microsoft announced its Dynamics 365 family of products and pricing which will take effect on November 1, 2016. The announcement received significant press coverage and I wrote a blog post on the vision behind this move. The Wall Street Journal has written on how Microsoft is upping its game to compete with Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP for the enterprise software market.

Microsoft has de-bundled Dynamics CRM Online into modules for sales, customer service, and marketing, added several new apps, and made some Dynamics ERP products available under the Dynamics 365.

There is quite a bit to digest here, but Microsoft offered several reasons why current Dynamics CRM customers should not panic:

Current Dynamics CRM customers can continue their subscriptions or change to the Dynamics 365 apps and bundles.

If you are using all the modules in Dynamics CRM, the Dynamics 365 Enterprise Plan 1 will include all these and more: Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Service Automation, Knowledge Management, Social Engagement, Gamification, Portal, and more.

Transition pricing will be available for existing customers to smooth the path to new app licensing.

Dynamics 365 will be available for on premises deployments as well as cloud-hosting by Microsoft. Hybrid cloud deployments are also supported by Microsoft's licensing scheme.

Some products have become free apps, and prices have been cut for cloud storage for Dynamics 365.

Microsoft partner companies like my company InfoStrat and resellers have received extensive training on Dynamics 365 pricing. We can help you model your requirements and scenarios to find the Dynamics 365 apps and bundles that are the best fit.

The move to Dynamics 365 is part of a strategy to reconcile dozens of software products developed or acquired by Microsoft into a coherent and compelling business platform. One of the goals is to eliminate isolated solutions which store redundant and possibly inconsistent data. Microsoft is also using this opportunity to inject machine learning and artificial intelligence into apps which they add the most value.

I have
been busy keeping up with the Dynamics 365 news and have written posts about
these changes on my blog:

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About Me

James Townsend, Founder and CEO of www.infostrat.com, is a leading expert on Microsoft solutions for government, and a pioneer of Microsoft Dynamics 365 (formerly Dynamics CRM) as a development platform. He has published over fifty articles and books on software development and other topics.